Any way at all to do an independent install?

[Henrik Nilsen Omma]

Al Puzzuoli wrote:
> Hi all,
>  
> I realize that at present there is no formal accessible install process 
> for Ubuntu, but I've been trying for some time to work out a way to get 
> around this fact.  It would seem logical that there should be a way to 
> do a completely hands free, unattended install.  I've been playing with 
> preseed and kickstart, but I'm coming to the conclusion that by the 
> time I  figure out  whether I can actually fully automate the process, I 
> could have already gotten sighted assistance to do installs on 10 or 
> more systems, grin.  The main issue I'm having is that the installer 
> always seems to stop at some point or another, typically at the 
> partitioning screen, even though I  explicitly tell it not to do so in 
> my preseed and ks.cfg files.
>  
> Failing that, I was hoping to find a way to boot the install cd, and 
> then telnet or ssh in from another machine.  Is it even possible to do 
> so with the Debian installer?  If not, then I strongly feel that 
> implementing such a feature would benefit remote administrators at 
> large, as well as offer an accessible solution. 
>  
> After years of being a RedHat die hard, I'm seriously considering making 
> the switch to Ubuntu; However, the apparent lack of any way whatsoever 
> to do an independent install is probably one of the biggest cons in my book.

Hello Al!

We have been thinking about how to facilitate an independent install for 
some time. It's clearly an important part of the puzzle and your case 
proves it.

In dapper the main focus will be on the Live CD, which boots directly 
into a Gnome session. Most people will be installing via that route. As 
a result we have also focused our efforts on that platform in the 
accessibility team.

There are still a few pieces missing (ugh!) but the idea is that you 
will be able to press a few keys at the very start of the boot process 
and from there you will have a fully accessible system that reads the 
screen output to you. At the gfxboot screen you press F5 for the access 
menu and then '3' for the screen reader and Enter to boot.

I'd be interested to know how this would work for you as a system 
administrator, trying to install quickly on many machines. The idea is 
to run the whole install process in Gnome with a tool called Espresso. 
You can ssh into a live session, but I'm not sure Espresso can be run 
from the command line or be scripted (that would be good).

  - Henrik

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